


Human Contact

by twilightshadow



Series: Writing Prompts and Other Shenanigans [5]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M, Prompt Fill, Reincarnation AU, bit angsty, bit fluffy, lots of X-Men feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:12:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightshadow/pseuds/twilightshadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So I went on the internet (read: tumblr) one day and I found this:</p><p>"yeah but reincarnation au where enjolras gets inexplicably upset and distressed whenever someone touches his hands to the point where he keeps his hands in his pockets most of the time to avoid touching anyone else’s hands at all and when he bumps into grantaire for the first time - literally bumps into him - he throws out his hands to catch him and doesn’t understand why he can’t let him go and just stands there apologising over and over to this complete stranger until grantaire says something like “it’s okay, i forgive you”"</p><p>And I decided to make it a thing. </p><p>I confess I have no idea who the OP was because I'm stupid and didn't copy their URL over. So, consider this an anonymous prompt fill</p><p>(Edit: it was tumblr user bunbunjolras. Thank you for letting me know =D xx)</p><p>It's deviates slightly from the original prompt, but I'm having an X-Men jag and this gave me ALL THE ROGUE FEELS. So.  </p><p>Enjoy xx</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who don't know, Rogue's mutation means that she takes the life force of whoever she touches with her bare skin, human or mutant. If she touches a mutant, she gains their gifts for a while. It's a bit badass but I feel so bad for her because she is always that little bit more isolated than your average mutant.

From a very young age, Enjolras hated being touched.

When he was three his mother took him to the supermarket on Sunday for the first time. She made him hold her hand. They had had to leave, minus the shopping, ten minutes later because the toddler had not stopped screaming.

When he was five he had been told off repeatedly for not holding the hand of his partner during their school trip to the Louvre. His only excuse had been, “It’s not right.”

When the teacher made him hold _her_ hand, it was all she could do to stop him running away. The young boy had spent the rest of the day in tears.

He never questions why. He simply knows that nobody can touch him.

He had thought, once, that he would grow out of his aversion to being touched, particularly on his hands. There had been a phase when he was eight where he had tried to push himself out of it by touching _everyone_ ; all it earned him was a series of panic attacks.

When he was ten, he took to wearing gloves all the time and all his pockets had holes in them from wear and tear.

 ***

Enjolras is a firebrand. He’s eighteen and has already made a name for himself on the debate circuit and several activism circles. He runs a blog; _La Barricade_. He is on a full scholarship to one of the best universities in Paris. He hasn’t hugged anyone in five years.

Now he’s eighteen he’s used to it, or so he tells himself.

He walks the streets on Paris with his hands in his pockets, in summer and in icy winter. He learns to hold his breath while shaking hands with people until the initial wave of nausea and fear and _wrongwrongwrong_ shakes itself loose from his mind.

His group of friends are insular, co-dependent, and have no qualms whatsoever about sleepovers involving cuddle piles. Not to mention half of them are in relationships, while he sits curled in an armchair by himself and tries to forget his own relative isolation.

He considers himself lucky in his friends. Combeferre isn’t very touchy-feely either. Courfeyrac is, but he respected people’s boundaries (despite having none himself).  They don’t think it’s weird that he goes around with his hands in his pockets, or that he never takes his gloves off during the winter no matter how many time his teachers cite him for it.

“Define normal,” was all Courfeyrac had said when he had told them. “Everyone needs quirks.”

 ***

Courf and Ferre were his oldest friends. The others had taken some convincing.

Jehan had taken his arm at their first meeting to try and write poetry on. Enjolras had flinched so wildly he had nearly given the poet a black eye.

Joly had once grabbed his wrist to check a pulse, fearing his latest deadly disease. Enjolras had given him a bloody nose.

After that, everyone steered well clear of anything more than a friendly pat on the back, the misfit in a band of misfits. Bahorel has nick-named him ‘Rogue.’ “Because we can’t touch you or you’ll kill us.”

“Who the hell is Rogue?”

The group milling in the café look at him, dumbfounded.

“You don’t know the X-Men?” asks Bossuet incredulously.

“The…who?”

Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Eponine and Jehan exchange looks.

As one they all yell, “FILM NIGHT!”  

 ***

Enjolras decides he likes the X-Men franchise.

“C’mon, Enjy,” goads Bahorel. “Magneto or the Professor?”

“It’s going to be Magneto, I bet it’s Magneto,” says Courfeyrac.

Enjolras laughs. “Neither. They ought to be working together, not fighting among themselves. How else will they get taken seriously?”

Bahorel sits back. “Okay, I was not expecting that.”

“Really?” says Eponine. “I would have thought it was obvious.”

“Magneto isn’t the enemy, the bigoted humans are.”

Grantaire chuckles his low laugh (the one that always makes Enjolras’ spine frisson somewhat). “Never thought I’d see the day when Enjolras and I actually agree on something.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Enjolras shoots back, because when it comes to Grantaire he can’t do anything else.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Grantaire takes a swig from his flask and goes back to watching Wolverine give someone the beating of their lives on camera.

Enjolras watches him for another beat out of the corner of his eye.

Rogue had a reason she couldn’t touch anyone, but he still knows how she felt.

 ***

Grantaire gets up halfway through the third film to use the toilet. Five minutes later Marius, Feuilly and Bossuet begin demanding coffee from within the tangle of limbs that has become the floor in front of Combeferre’s coffee table.

"Go and get it yourselves," says Enjolras from the armchair.

"We're not moving," says Courfeyrac from the top of the pile. "Anyway I think Jehan has fallen asleep on me."

Enjolras rolls his eyes, but accepts his fate and walks out to the kitchen only to crash headlong into Grantaire coming out from the flat’s single bathroom.

Reflexively his reaches out to catch him as he goes down. His arms grasp the bare skin above Grantaire’s wrists and he braces himself for the nausea…

The nausea that never comes.

Instead he finds his hands clamp around Grantaire’s wrists like they are magnetised and a sense of _right_ explodes inside his head.

“Enjolras? Are you okay?” Hands he recognises and yet doesn’t grasp his forearms. “Enj…?”

_“You believe in nothing.” “I believe in you” “incapable of believing, willing, thinking, living, and of dying.” “You will see.” “Go and sleep somewhere else. This is a place for intoxication, not drunkenness” “…the Republic is not so rich in men that it can afford to waste them.” “Shoot me.” “Long live the Republic! Je’en suis!”_

He is drowning in bright blue eyes and a sea of old memories.

Unconciously his hand slides down Grantaire’s arm, never breaking contact with the rough skin until he clasps his hand.

“Do you permit it?” he whispers.

Grantaire looks at him as though he’s seen a ghost. “You remember?”

“ _You_ remember?”

“Since the first day we met.”

It’s all too much then and Enjolras break eye contact, buries his head in the curve of Grantaire’s neck and breathes him in.

“Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for everything foul thing I said to you, I am so sorry, please forgive me…”

“Hey, hey…” The arm and hand not clasping Enjolras’ comes up and wraps around his back firmly. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

Enjolras barely hears him, tangling his other hand in black waves because _he can_ _touch him_ and it feel wonderful.

“Er…guys?”

The two of them turn to see most of their friends peering at them over the back of the sofa.

“Not to interrupt the moment or anything,” says Combeferre. “But is there anything you want to tell us?”

 _So many things,_ Enjolras wants to say, but he catches Grantaire’s eye and thinks that explanations can wait. There will be talking enough later. They have two centuries to sort through.

“Right now?” he says. “Not a thing.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Grantaire smiles. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back by popular demand. (Aka the second chapter that I was never planning to write. )
> 
> Written in about two hours in a fit of fangirl pique.

Nobody can explain the shift in Enjolras.

The first to notice is Combeferre, but only because he lives with Enjolras and therefore spends most time with him. He walks into the kitchen two days after the film night and sees Enjolras’ favourite pair of gloves lying on the table.

They’ve been worn so often there are holes in the thumb and forefinger. The politics student has smarter gloves for formal meetings and warmer gloves for protests and rallies but on a normal day he never leaves home without these.

Combeferre puts the incident to the back of his mind.

But he notices a subtle shift in Enjolras’ behaviour, particularly around Grantaire. He’s freer with his hands. He gestures more, whereas before he had kept his hands very close to his body for fear of brushing against anyone. His stance is looser, his bearing taller.

He doesn’t look so afraid any more.

He and Courfeyrac walk home together after the meeting. To his surprise, Courfeyrac brings it up before he can find a suitable break in the conversation.

“Does our fearless leader seem different to you?”

Combeferre snorts. “’Fearless leader’? You need to stop spending so much time with R.” Sobering a little, he continues, “So you noticed it too?”

“I think everyone has. Have you ever seen the man without his gloves before?”

“No…and that’s quite something.”

“Also, he was all over Grantaire the other night.”

“Again…” Combeferre falls silent as he walks. “What do you think’s changed?”

“I wouldn’t begin to imagine,” says Courfeyrac. “This is Enjolras. He was never normal, even without the whole ‘touch’ thing. He doesn’t react to things the way everyone else does.”

Combeferre doesn’t reply at first.

“Do you think he knows?” he asks eventually.

“What, about Grantaire and his painfully obvious crush? Probably not.”

“Shall we tell him?”

Combeferre shakes his head. “Best to let them work it out for themselves.”

***

Enjolras himself has not noticed a shift.

Or perhaps it’s simply that the shift feels so natural he takes no account of it.

Since he first touched Grantaire, since he first remembered, something in him has broken loose.

It’s true that he still doesn’t like anybody else touching him, but the nausea isn’t what it was. It’s manageable. He can work with it.

Grantaire, on the other hand…he finds he can hardly keep his hands off him.

It’s nothing major, not like that first night. There’s no desperate clinging. He gives him light, subtle, almost unnoticeable touches. Fingers linger when passing papers or pens. A hand resting lightly on his shoulder when passing, or on the days when Grantaire’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Not moving his feet from where they rest against his shoes under the table while they’re arguing about whatever the issue is this week.

The man is no less irritating, but there is a new knowledge between them, a new camaraderie, the significance of which Enjolras is oblivious to.

***

The other Amis? Not so much.

***

“What the hell is going on with those two?!” wails Courfeyrac one night. “I swear to God, if they don’t start either fucking or fist-fighting I may die from all the unresolved sexual tension!”

Bahorel raises an eye-brow. “Enjolras? Fist fighting with Grantaire? Have you seen the man trying to box? R would floor him in a second.”

“And? Maybe it would get all the damn static electricity out of the air. Have you felt the static? I swear I’ve felt the static.”

Jehan pats him on the arm. “There there, darling.”

“Courf has a point actually,” says Joly. “Something’s changed, I’m not sure what.”

As one, Les Amis turn and glance towards Grantaire and Enjolras, heads bent together over a table, discussing something earnestly.

“I have a feeling that we might find out if we leave them to it,” says Marius.

***

It’s three weeks after the film night that Enjolras and Grantaire sit down to talk.

Grantaire had wanted to address the issue earlier, promise. But he’s an emotional coward at heart, especially when it comes to Enjolras.

He’s terrified: the fingers that pour a stream of boiling water from the kettle into his mug are shaking. He wants nothing more than to brush it, off, go back to pretending to be oblivious and uncaring, but the blonde on his couch, nervously – and when did that happen, Enjolras nervous? – clutching a cup of tea showed up on his doorstep at half past six on a Friday with a Look in his eye and he knows that it’s time to stop running.

He sits cross-legged on the coffee table rather than crowd the other student.

“So,” he starts. “1832. Your revolution.”

“Our revolution,” Enjolras replies. “You were there, you were as much of a part of it as everyone else.”

“Part of the furniture. I was asleep.”

“Not for all of it.”

“For the bit that mattered.”

“It all mattered.”

Grantaire laughs. “It’s nice to know that 200 years hasn’t changed you very much.”

“Be serious.”

“ _Je suis farouche, mon ami._ ”

Enjolras closes his eyes briefly. “You said that once before.”

“Before I went out to the Barriére du Maine. I remember. That’s why I said it.”

Enjolras sets his tea down by Grantaire’s leg. “I meant what I said.”

“Never believed otherwise. I mean, look at me, both then and now.” The dark haired man looks down at his paint-splattered jeans. “200 years haven’t really changed either of us.”

“They’ve changed me more than you might think.” Enjolras leans forwards and looks up at him imploringly, as though begging Grantaire to believe him. His hand twitches towards him, but he’s holding back. “I don’t mean the drinking, or the cynicism, or the way I beat you down for it. The opposite, in fact. I meant what I said to you on the night we all watched X-Men. I treated you appallingly.”

“It was never anything more than I deserved. At the time, just to be allowed into your presence was enough. You know it was always you I believed in, never the revolution, but I also knew you would never believe me, or in me. And, I was happy with that, back then.”

“What was it like for you? Finding me again?”

It takes Grantaire a few moments to collect his thoughts and feelings into some kind of coherence, if there is any coherence to be found in such a sudden onset of joy and despair and incredulity and disbelief and memories of centuries ago and _physical pain_ all at once.

“The first time we met, it was like my magnetic north shifted,” he says at last. “I became a satellite, or maybe a compass needle. I couldn’t fight your magnetism. I didn’t even think to try.” He huffs with laughter suddenly, recalling something. “You remember the running joke was Joly always orienteering himself so he slept with his head towards north?”

Enjolras smiles. “I remember.”

“My own private joke was that he was pointed in the wrong direction, and north was wherever you were. The second time though…it was like being hit with a tidal wave while anchored to a rock. I mean you know what it’s like being literally hit in the face by a past life.” He half-consciously fiddles with the string around his neck, and the Peace Corps symbol attached to it. “You were that rock. Just standing there in the street like you’d been waiting for me. I was…Christ, Enjolras, I was fucked from day one.”

Now Enjolras does reach forward and rest a hand on his bare ankle. The rush of relief his touch brings makes him want to cry.

“R…”

“Enjolras, please don’t. You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to lie to spare my feelings.”

“I do have to say something. Please, hear me out, and believe me when I say that I have absolutely no intention of lying to you.”

The blonde politics student closes his eyes for a second. Grantaire can see the gears moving but he dares not interrupt.

“The very first time we met,” he begins,” In the 1800s, I mean…the first time we met, I saw a man battered by the world. When I saw that that same man was a talented artist and athlete as well as a gifted and well-read orator, he strengthened my resolve to change the world for the better. I thought that if he could see that I wanted to stop anyone from feeling as low as he clearly did…buried in a bottle, speaking in nothing but nothings and rebuttals…and then when he couldn’t I lost patience. Not conviction, just patience.”

Grantaire tries to work through this in his head.

“I already told you, there’s nothing to forgive.”

“Dammit, R, there is everything to forgive! I treated you despicably. I should have been more understanding, gone about things differently, listened to your cares instead of assuming that they were my own. I should have appreciated you and your belief, and your love too. Yes, R, I noticed.” Grantaire’s eyes widen but Enjolras ploughs on. “What did you think my smile was trying to say?”

 “I…” Grantaire wants to say ‘acknowledgment’ but he has always known, in his heart. “I saw acceptance in your eyes. And maybe some affection.”

Enjolras smiles again, a gentle smile. Grantaire’s hand unconsciously finds his wrist, where he still holds his ankle. Enjolras catches it and twines their fingers again.

“There was also regret,” the blonde continues. “And now I’ve found you again…I want to rectify my past mistakes. Find some forgiveness for myself.”

“Enjolras…”

“No, not from you, although there are many words and actions that I want to beg your forgiveness for, both in this life and our last. I would beg on my knees if necessary. But I also have to forgive myself for getting you so very, very wrong and hurting you badly in the process.”

The harsh truth emanating from his words hits Grantaire like a kick to the gut. He squeezes the other youth’s hand. The pressure is immediately returned.

“And the touch thing? I never got the touch thing.”

Enjolras shrugs. “Penance? A mark? A left-over psychosomatic memory? I have no idea. I doubt we ever will.”

“Not that I’m complaining, mind you…” says Grantaire quickly. Enjolras laughs and this time Grantaire can’t help but join in.

“You don’t mind if I carry on, then? I find it grounds me somewhat. And touching others becomes less painful the more I touch you.”

“Consider this permission to carrying on touching me for the rest of your life.” Grantaire cradles Enjolras’ writing-calloused hands between his own paint-roughened ones.

“I have to forgive myself as well,” he says quietly. “For abandoning our friends to their fates.”

“I think you’re well on your way to that already.”

Grantire looks at his, blue eyes quizzical.

“Les Amis. You love them. You would do anything for them, have done many things for them. You will continue to do so, because that is who you are. You care deeply for the people you love.”

Grantaire smiles wanly. “I’ve been trying for a long time.”

“I believe you will succeed.”

Grantaire tries and fails to stop himself flushing.

“What will you tell them?” he asks. “Combeferre, Courfeyrac, the others?”

“I don’t intend to tell them anything. Let them draw their own conclusions for the time being. This is one of those things that they’ll have to come to by themselves before they can understand. We will know if and when they start to remember as well.”

Grantaire has to take a mental deep breath before continuing.

“And us? Where does it leave us?”

Enjolras thinks for a second. “I think it leaves us here, for now. In the future…well, let’s get there and find out.”

Grantaire laughs loudly then. “Spoken like a true activist.”

Enjolras glares at him for a moment, but it doesn’t stop Grantaire from laughing, and it doesn’t make him let go of his hand.

If anything, he only holds tighter, for they walk this rope together now and it is a long way to the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fully blame you lot if this winds up a multi-chaptered thing. I'm still fighting my way the TWTIBIY, which is once again being recalcitrant...
> 
> Anyway. twilightshadow, signing off for another night, another chapter, another...idek, it's midnight and I'm ill.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr, I am twilightshadow again, thank you for reading, catch ya on the flipside =D


End file.
